The Future of Consumerist

Over the last twelve years, Consumerist has been a steadfast proponent and voice on behalf of consumers, from exposing shady practices by secretive cable companies to pushing for action against dodgy payday lenders. Now, we’re joining forces with Consumer Reports, our parent organization, to cultivate the next generation of consumer advocacy.

Stay tuned as Consumerist’s current and future content finds its home as a part of the Consumer Reports brand. In the meantime, you can access existing Consumerist content below, and we encourage you to visit Consumer Reports to read the latest consumer news.

texas

While people may disagree about the best ingredients for their favorite barbecue dishes, everyone can agree that pieces of plastic do not belong in pulled beef. That’s why grocery chain H-E-B is recalling 6.4 tons of shredded beef with barbecue sauce shipped to its stores. [More]

You can fly over floods… but only if there’s a place to take off and a place to land. Houston’s airports, like the rest of the city, have been dealing with high water and torrential rain caused by Hurricane Harvey, and while the runways are dry, it’s going to take some time for air travel to and through the area to get anything like back to normal. [More]

Flooding in the Houston area continues today, as remnants of Hurricane Harvey continue to unleash unfathomable torrents of rain on the Gulf Coast. In addition to the destruction facing local homes and businesses, all travel into or out of the nation’s fourth-largest city — both for people and for things — has been hampered, and will likely continue to be for some time. [More]

Thousands of Texas residents have been displaced following Hurricane Harvey’s landfall over the weekend. While many of these people no doubt traveled to stay with friends and family outside of the affected areas, others don’t have those options. Instead, they’ve sought refuge from rising flood waters at community centers, shelters… and furniture stores. [More]

There’s a neat trick that big-box stores like Lowe’s have pulled off in some states. They claim that for tax purposes, their open, thriving businesses should be valued the same as empty property, so that they pay way less. In one state, though, a lawmaker being called back for a special session of the legislature is hoping he can end the practice locally. [More]

A former local cable and broadband provider in Texas alleges that after it turned down Comcast’s offer to acquire the company’s customers, Comcast contractors repeatedly severed the smaller business’s cable lines, ultimately driving it out of business. [More]

Alamo Drafthouse, a small movie theater chain known for its anti-texting stance and general coolness, scheduled a special women-only showing of the summer superhero film Wonder Woman. This seemed like a fun one-off idea, but the idea has met some resistance, particularly online. Now a law professor who specializes in employment discrimination and sexual orientation law is filing a complaint with the city, claiming that the showing may be violating the city’s own laws. [More]

A woman in Texas claims that not only did a manager at her local Chipotle repeatedly install spy cameras in the restaurant’s female restroom, but that the restaurant and its corporate office covered up the peeping; a charge the Chipotle HQ denies. [More]

A Texas man who used Home Depot’s program for tax-exempt business purchases to scam more than $1.1 million from the retailer has been sentenced to two years in federal prison and ordered to repay all his ill-gotten gains. [More]

Thousands of American Airlines employees unknowingly became the targets of a multi-million dollar insurance fraud scheme carried out by a father-son duo who claimed to provide the airline workers with free hearing aids for simply taking a test. [More]

Most practitioners of the “hot exchange” — the retail grift where a fraudster steals an item then “returns” it to the store for a refund — are happy to chisel away a criminal living, earning $50 here, $100 there. But one Texas man was thinking big when he stole — and then returned — more than $11,000 from Home Depot stores. [More]

Unlike traditional taxis, Uber passengers aren’t expected to tip; you can’t even add a tip on the app. However, Uber did recently settle a class-action lawsuit by allowing drivers to solicit and receive tips, but only in cash. One big problem: This policy appears to be illegal in multiple states. [More]

When you think of a bank robbery, you probably imagine some heavily armed crew trying to run off with as much money as possible in a very short window of time. But one Texas bank employee almost managed to get away with stealing more than $1 million, by chiseling away at her employer over the course of a decade. [More]

The country’s largest operator of free-standing emergency rooms — urgent medical care providers that are not physically connected to any hospital — has been accused of deceiving their patients into paying fees of several thousand dollars. [More]

On Christmas Eve 2014, a driver distracted by using FaceTime on his iPhone crashed into another vehicle on I-35 in Texas, killing the 5-year-old girl in the back seat. The child’s parents and her older sister — all also injured in the collision — are now suing Apple, alleging that the company was negligent in not deploying safeguards that would restrict the use of FaceTime while driving. [More]

A lot of white-haired bearded guys look like Santa Claus. Some of them play up that resemblance during the Christmas season, whether it’s by getting hired to be a Santa for an event, or by just spreading goodwill and holiday cheer. However, one unofficial Santa says he was booted from a Six Flags amusement park because he looked too much like the big-bellied bearded gift-giver. [More]

In a desert, there’s not very much water to go around. In a food desert, the problem is groceries: reliable, affordable supermarkets with fresh, healthy, decent-quality offerings get farther apart and harder to find as you head into some regions. One Texas city has been trying to solve the problem for thousands of its residents by ooffering large amounts of cash to supermarket retailers, but even the lure of free millions has resulted in no takers. [More]